


Of Doves and Dragons (Gency Week 2018)

by palladionaigis



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bedtime Stories, Canon Compliant, F/M, Fantasy AU, Historical Fantasy AU, Mentions of injury and surgery, Pining, Post-Canon, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-18 23:53:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14224557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palladionaigis/pseuds/palladionaigis
Summary: This is my work for Gency Week 2018! I'm so blessed to take place in this for the first time and can't wait to see what everyone thinks. While I've been writing them as the week goes, I'm posting them a bit late and kind of spotty, since work has taken a lot of time out of me (I've started training for a new and higher position!) and it's honestly rare for me to have enough time to sit down and get everything in with the correct tags and info. That being said, please enjoy!day 1 - Royaltyday 2 - Dark (companion piece to Day 5)day 3 - Weddingday 4 - Vintageday 5 - Light (companion piece to Day 2)day 6 - Mermaids / day 7 - Family (combination prompt)





	1. day 1 - Royalty

**Author's Note:**

> day 1 - Royalty  
> For all she is, and for all he and his kind ever were, she is a queen, and he her dragon.
> 
> A/N: Tried to keep this one short and a little mysterious. I feel like the dragon AU can be kind of overdone if dragged out too long, especially from me - I'm better with canon timelines when it comes to Gency, so let's see how this goes!

Many centuries ago, this land had harbored dragons.

They fiercely guarded their hoards, their caves, and their forests, and the humans who lived amongst them worshipped them as Gods. The years passed, and as human civilization grew and expanded, they had found ways to drive the dragons away with help from a civilization who came to them from what felt like worlds away, across the oceans that were too vast even for the dragons to travel. Tricking them with their words, _spells_ , they had later learned, and made them do things like leave, or eat things poisonous to them... the carnage left behind was unbearable for many of the dragons. Losing so many of their own kind drove most of who were left mad. Thousands of human lives became victim to the dragons driven to the ends of their wits from the deaths of their comrades.

Some tried to run.

The few left who were sane enough and far away enough yet to get away from the humans traveled as far as they could, over mountains and deserts, hoping that they could find peace far from humans. One of them, a majestic green dragon with scales that would shine like stained glass when hit just the right way from the sun, traveled as far as he could, running away from his family, who were among the ones left who still had their awareness about them. They had vowed to kill each and every human they saw, and he wanted no part in the violence.

He knows that not all human can possibly be so evil as to kill all of them - but he is still young and naive. His older brother wanders too close, ends up in a homicidal frenzy from the poisonous words in his mind, and chases the green dragon down to almost the edge of the Earth in effort to stop him from running away - and in his anger brings the younger green dragon almost to the brink of death.

It is the first time that the green dragon finds it in himself to weep for the family he has now lost.

As he lays on the cold ground, further North than he thought he went, and most certainly further from his homeland than he had ever been, letting the world slip away from him and into the darkness, he feels a warmth upon the scales of his forehead, and he closes himself off, figuring that it is finally the end of his lifespan, a gentle touch from the bringer of death to ease him to the next life. Dragons are hard to kill, but it would certainly not be unreasonable to fall to his own kind.

He does not expect his eyes to open up again. When they do, his vision is blurred, and his limbs feel weak, heavier than they should be. He smells his own blood, though not as much of it as he did before, when his brother had attacked him as prompted by the human spell. He knows he is indoors - there is a steady warmth in temperature here, and he hears the crackle of wood in a fire. He has enough strength left in him to rise, not to his full height by any means, but he again feels a touch of warmth against his side, and a soft voice rings out from beside him.

Human speech is something he can understand, but it means nothing to him other than that it has destroyed thousands of the minds of his kind, both close and distant relatives. He feels the anger in his blood begin to boil, but he realizes that the voice is not bending his mind - if anything, the pain in his limbs lessens as the soft voice travels from beside him. He tries to turn his head to see the source, but his eyelids quickly grow heavy, he feels sleepier as each moment goes by, and again he wonders if this is it.

He awakens again, unsure of how much time has passed. This time though, there is no fire crackling. Instead, light pours in with fresh air from an opened window. More human voices are traveling from just outside the door opposite where the light streams in. He does not feel as weak as he did the last time he awoke, and he raises himself slightly, trying to listen.

Through the door, which seems to lead into another, larger room, he sees several humans. He stays back, silent, out of eyeshot of anyone who might be unfortunate enough to peek past the threshold. One of the figures is smaller than all the rest - both in height and in figure. All of the larger figures are dressed in the same clothing - possibly as a sign of solidarity in servitude, the dragon thinks, which is just like the humans to have slaves that are also their own kind - and the smaller figure is in robes that are both more brightly colored and more ornately stitched. 

Wearing the robes is a human that, if circumstances were even slightly different, he may even think would be beautiful. Parts of the cloth glitter as they hit the natural light in the room, and accent the bright blue of her eyes - a blue that reminds him of his brother’s scales - and the pale wheat color of her hair. He is sure any human this dainty and beautiful would have admirers across any land. They seem to be arguing about something, but have quite clearly come to an impasse.

“It is too dangerous,” one of the advisors says in a hushed yet concerned voice. “You cannot possibly think it a good idea to keep the dragon here for safe keeping! He is far from home. We should turn him loose!”

“After how injured he was? I think not. If he wishes to go once he is fully recovered, I will let him, but you saw how he was when he came here. He had almost lost three of his legs!” The small woman has anger boiling in her voice.

The dragon wonders belatedly if she was talking about him. Was that why he had smelled so much blood? He looks down at his legs. Indeed, his front right leg is bandaged still, and his left front leg is scarred, jagged lines separating the scales, the same down his sides and on from what he can see of his back legs as well. His brother had done this to him after being corrupted by the human’s spell. A human had made him turn against his own family, nearly tearing his own brother to shreds.

So why had this human helped him? He’s sure it must be a ruse, they must know he is awake, but the small woman in the ornate robes quips her words at the advisors. “If you do not wish to aid me in helping him recover, then be gone. You have no right to teach me in this manner - my parents did not hire you to discount my kindness against a beast that hates our kind for what we have done to them.” With that, she pushes her way past them and starts storming back towards the doorway he is peeking through. He quickly moves back to his original position, laying his head back down on his forearms, looking out the window. He hopes the woman does not notice his state of lucidity right away.

There is a small seating area near where the fire had crackled the last time he had awoken, and he hears the woman sit down in one of the chairs there. The silence is almost deafening, but with his heightened hearing he can tell that she is very carefully measuring each breath in her chest, counting each intake and exhale, and he raises his head finally to look at her up close.

She is breathtaking, even for a human - and the dragon hates himself for thinking so. She is staring at the floor intently, and his own head tilts as he tries to figure out the thoughts currently evidently storming in her head. Her mouth is moving, but she looks like she is arguing with herself. He wonders if she is placing a spell on herself to calm herself down, though the anger he can feel from under her skin does no changing. He huffs slightly, in hopes to attract her attention and maybe give her a scare, but she looks up and her face changes from rage to concern in an instant.

“You are awake! Thank goodness.” She hurries towards him, and he is surprised at her audacity to approach him so quickly. He is even more confused when her hands take the edge of the bandage on his forearm and unwrap it ever so gently. He sees his skin, still raw and not quite scarred, sees that the bandage has been lathered with something, and when it is taken away from his skin, it prickles in exposure to the cooler air. He hisses slightly, and she sits before him, lifting the forearm into her lap. She raises her hands and braces them just off of his skin, and he feels a warmth flow from her skin and onto his scales. It manifests as a gentle golden glow, and he is too entranced by it to withdraw.

He knows without a doubt that this is another form of the magic that drove his brother mad, but this soft glow is reducing the pain, and even that being said, this human is still much less frightened of him than she ought to be. She seems to notice that he is very confused by her behavior, so once she is done with his one forearm, she looks up at him every once in a while, as she changes and replaces his bandages.

“You must be confused as to why I’m helping you,” she says softly and he tilts his head at her. Where there should be rage burning in his chest, there is only curiosity. “I found you, injured. The marks look suspiciously like large talons. Sort of like these,” she says and brushes a finger against one of his large claws. “I have heard of the horrors that transpired in the East. I do not want the same tragedy to befall you. I will let you go home, once you are recovered… if you want. That is all I ask of you - merely wait until your wounds have healed, and you can go home.”

 _There is no home left for me_ , he whispers in his mind, figuring that with what his brother did to him, the same must have befallen their clan as well. The spells that the humans cast on them would not wear off until there was blood to sate their unending lust for death.

So he stays.

The healing process is long - his back legs are worse than his front, the scar tissue still raw, the limbs lathered with opiate-esque medicines to dull the pain. The woman - he later learns in passing conversation that she is the queen of this land, probably due to her miraculous gift of healing the sick - spends almost every waking moment either close to him or beside him, making sure he is in no pain and healing at the right speed. It takes his front legs another week to heal, but the back legs he foresees will take some time.

In the weeks that follow, he sees many interesting things. The queen will see her subjects often - many of the ones that come to visit her are usually ailing in some way or another. She spends time with them, listens to them, often coming to their aid to help with either injuries or other maladies. 

Once his back legs have recovered enough for him to walk again, the queen makes good of her promise in a smaller way - knowing he’s not well enough to fly, she allows him passage throughout the corridors of the castle. While the rational part of him screams to run away at whatever first chance he gets, to escape the confines and never come back, he knows he wouldn’t make it far. All the things he is learning about the humans are too interesting to pass up. He can’t make much sense of the government they follow, but the subjects who visit the throne room and sometimes gawk at him when he starts curling himself around the throne of his current benefactor amuse him to no end.

He’s not sure at what point he starts to entertain the thought that maybe his affection for this benefactor isn’t all what it seems. It’s probably somewhere between when he knows he could fly, and the night that the queen falls asleep curled near the fireplace, having been in the middle of filling in reports of some kind, and he lays his head beside her to rest. He’s also not entirely sure why he doesn’t feel as guilty about it as he would have expected to.

“The humans around here would know not to hurt you. They wouldn’t dare,” the queen had said to him some sun cycles ago, as a throwaway comment to her maybe, but it meant something to him that this human, smaller than so many of her kind with a power so miraculous it defied many of the gods they prayed to, was so confident that her power over her subjects would mean his protection.

Or perhaps it was exactly that - maybe she was protective of him?

He doesn’t know for sure. All he knows for now is that he will stay. She has done much for him. As he looks down at her from his place beside her by the fire, he figures it won’t be so bad to stay here for a while.


	2. day 2 - Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> day 2 - Dark  
> She sees darkness in him, ever since the first moment she laid eyes on him, and hopes it will not snuff out the light she knows is still in his soul.
> 
> A/N: Here comes the pining! Good God, canon timeline Gency is my kryptonite, and I can't wait to share this and the rest of these works with you all! This might be the last one I have the chance to post tonight but I should be able to get the rest posted tomorrow (my day off!). This is a companion piece to Day 5, Light. Essentially they are the same point in the timeline followed in each prompt, but this one is from Angela's perspective. Day 5 will be from Genji's. Enjoy!

She has known him for about ten seconds the first time she asks how the hell he is alive. She's been brought a glorified slab of meat, more or less – a breathing corpse with no less than THREE tourniquets, three limbs missing, chest cavity slashed open almost every which way, almost decapitated to boot (or maybe it's just a lack of lower jaw, there's so much blood she can hardly tell), and she thanks her medical training and her lucky stars that she has a strong stomach.

So she does what she can, which to be fair isn't much, but it's nearly fifteen hours of tense touch-and-go, the most intense surgery she has ever had to attempt with her biotics, units upon units of blood being fed back into him in an effort to see he doesn’t bleed out. The young man does not regain consciousness yet, so as she waits for him to wake out of the anesthesia, she starts discussing drawing up plans with Torbjörn for possible prosthetics, though he does nothing else immediately other than crafting a new metal insert to fix the man’s lower jaw with help of some 3D scanning done after the first surgery was completed. It is the least they can do to reduce risk of complications from several vital parts of his neck being exposed, not to mention giving him a way to sit without half his tongue hanging out of an open hole.

Over the next few days, she observes carefully and sees the wounds start to heal. The young man seems to have some fight in him still, but it’s a whole two weeks before he opens his eyes. He’s still intubated. Gabriel Reyes is in the room with Genji Shimada when he finally wakes. Even though he yells for Angela immediately (hanging out the door and yelling "Doc!"), he’s the one who has to give this man the spiel through the 'you're in the hospital with a breathing tube, try not to move too much and we'll get it,' and within several moments, Angela comes back into the room.

Her hands are very gentle, removing the breathing tube and then holding her palm steady against to help him through the first few coughs. She has no idea how she's going to explain what happened to him. "Mister Shimada," she starts, her voice as gentle as it can be, with her small lilting accent, "there was a terrible act committed against you," she starts, because there's no way she can call this a terrible accident, and she knows it, "you have lost three of your limbs, part of your lower jaw… there is the potential for huge amounts of physical therapy and speech therapy likely to get you used to the new-"

"M…'rother…"

Even now, she can see it. She has to brace her hand gently against the man's chest to stop him from trying to get up and exacerbate his injuries. There is so much anger, boiling and burning behind his eyes. Darkness that threatens to consume his soul because of his thirst for revenge.

She watches the anger and darkness burn in him the entire time he is in her care. From his first day awake, adjusting to the facts of having lost three of his limbs, to the rage that fueled him during his physical therapy when he took his first steps again. It is always there, ever threatening to wrap him in its tendrils and pull him down into the abyss.

Sometimes, in her most selfish moments, she likes to think that in her brief moments that she gets to spend with him, that she chases the darkness away. 

The only reason she even has that thought is because she treasures their moments alone - it is the few rare times that she gets to see the wisps of anger and darkness recede ever so slightly. She thinks she sees a bit of the man he once was.

It’s on their mission at King’s Row that she realizes she’s fallen. Hard. It was a combination of the saying that when you love someone, you just know, but on the other side it’s a cacophony of her conscience screaming at her, asking herself why she didn’t realize this sooner. How does it happen? She’s standing safely behind Reinhardt’s shield one moment, and the next he’s gone, she doesn’t know where he’s gone, Lena is too preoccupied with one of the eradicators, and the detonator drops some five feet before her. Was this where it ends? Would she die here, surrounded by omnics, no one left to help her friends? She would die without getting to tell Genji - that stupid, angry, stubborn fool - that she loves him.

The world shifts on its axis at that precise moment, she remembers the depth of the pain and tightness in her chest when she watched him walk through the doorways of the Watchpoint to leave and join Blackwatch - against her wishes and advising, though she never really could have stopped him in the first place. It all falls into place and makes sense. The heat of her cheeks every time she would be sitting with him in her office for his checkups and he’d comment on how amazed he was that she could still look as good as she did despite hardly ever sleeping. The malice she felt in her blood against O’Deorain when she’d tried several times to recruit Genji for her awful experiments after everything she had already done to him (even at Angela’s outcries of morals).

Most importantly, her mind is drudged back to the moment she left for the mission - he’d been there with Gabriel to see them all off - she’d watched Lena hug him, thanking him for being a good sparring partner, and not to slack off if she “didn’t make it”, which Angela had assured her she would (and she did), and when she went to say goodbye to him and Gabriel, she patted Gabe’s arm and looked to Ana telling her to take care of them if anything went wrong. She was supposed to be the positive one, but on a small mission like this, anything could go wrong.

She had stopped before Genji and laid her hand against his shoulder. _“Please be careful,”_ he had whispered, his hand coming up to grasp hers, and even in the short space of that one moment, he managed to take her breath away in how his free arm scooped her against him for the most brief embrace. She tucked her face against him and the mechanisms of his neck, and his hand lingers on her waist for far longer than is necessary, even when she pulls back to look at him again and her other hand comes up to cup his faceplate.

 _“I should be telling you that,”_ Angela remembers whispering with a sad smile, hoping to any God that people still prayed to that she could come home.

 _“I will see you when you return,”_ Genji says softly, and even when Angela slips from his grasp to leave on the Orca, her hand lingers in his about five seconds longer than it should.

Years later, though, long after she’s realized she loves Genji, and almost just as long after he admitted to her he returned her affections, she can still sometimes see the darkness at the edge of his being. His years of learning with Zenyatta have taught him to control the darkness well, and his anger no longer burns like a wild brushfire. It is contained like a candle, only ever rages when he is to protect himself and his own, and most importantly Angela knows it has taught him that just as there is anger in life, so is there happiness. As the sun finally curls its way over the horizon of the Watchpoint and she feels his arm tighten over her side, his chest against her back in their shared room, and a sleepy puff of breath hits her neck, she knows that until her last day alive, she will fight with him side by side to keep the darkness away.


	3. day 3 - Wedding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> day 3 - Wedding  
> It’s not perfect by any means, and she knows he’ll fight her tooth and nail with how stubborn he is to do this properly when they’re not in immediate danger of death, but for now, this is enough for her.
> 
> A/N: I wasn't expecting to be able to post this today as I was stuck doing literally eight hours of corporate busywork today, but I love this trope (I hope this hasn't been overdone!), and I totally see this happening to both of them. Enjoy!

It was never supposed to happen like this.

Only two weeks ago, the both of them had been on a mission together in Hanamura. They had been lucky enough to get some downtime during their stay, allowing Genji to slip away and plan a very important surprise with the help of Lena and Hana - both of whom were more than eager to help him plan something so important.

The proposal had gone perfectly. It was spring, the cherry blossoms were in full bloom, and even though they knew they would be heading into battle within the next few hours, he’d pulled her aside and asked her to marry him in the streets of his old home. She’d cried and said yes (“how could you think I’d ever say no,” she’d tell him later), and Angela finally got to daydream like a little girl again about how her wedding day might go.

She never wanted a large ceremony. Honestly, Angela wouldn’t even have minded it taking place along the coast of Gibraltar, off the Watchpoint. What she most certainly didn’t expect her wedding to be, however, was this.

They’re fighting a huge surge of omnic uprisings in the ruins of Ilios where until recently, an extremist group had been setting up camp ready to possibly bomb the closest cities. Winston had made the executive decision for them that they would send a small but elite team to deal with the problem. Now, they’re stuck amongst the shells of what used to be buildings, awaiting backup that was nowhere to be found yet.

She’s on the ground, knees having buckled just from sheer exhaustion, and she can feel the footsteps of the next wave of omnics headed in their direction through the very ground she’s sitting on. Reinhardt has his shield up somewhere ahead of her, and before she knows it, Genji is gripping her wrist, pulling her back up. She fights to stay standing - they’ve been at this for hours, fighting for their lives, but his grip on her is steady as it always is.

“Reinhardt, I know it is a hard time to ask this of you, but I must know if you can do me a favor,” Genji says, back straightening. Angela looks to him, confused. She can feel the thundering footsteps getting stronger, louder. Ana is next to them, and Angela slowly feels her strength returning with the aid of the older support’s biotics. Her legs stop shaking long enough and Reinhardt turns to both of them, a somber look on his face. He knows they are still in danger.

“Anything, my boy, what is it?”

Genji pauses for a moment, the footsteps ever closer now, and he reaches for his faceplate, taking it off. Reinhardt is confused, and Ana looks at both of them, at Lena off to the side. Jack is up on a ledge somewhere to their East keeping a lookout. “If you would not mind, seeing as this battle may get more intense from here and keeping in mind our current exhaustion… I would like you to marry Angela and I.”

“Genji, what? Here?” The blonde’s eyes are wide but Reinhardt’s sudden, booming laughter takes her back to more easy moments in her memories.

“You give this old man too much honor!” Reinhardt’s strong voice booms, having to grow with the thunderous approaching stampede of omnics. “It may not be perfect, but I would like nothing better!”

“We’ve got incoming!” Jack’s voice shouts from their right, and Mercy raises her staff. Reinhardt sends out a fire strike and manages to clip the left side off one of the oncoming, and his barrier goes up and stays up. Ana provides all the support from the back for those further away and Angela stays close.

“My dear friends,” Reinhardt is smiling through it all, words ringing from his chest loudly, “I wish this was a gathering under better circumstances considering what we’re about to do,” an artillery blast goes off somewhere to their left, shaking the ground and making Lena stumble in one of her blinks as she zips, taking out enemy after enemy. “Yet here we are, about to join two of my closest, dearest loved ones in marriage, and I could not think of a more beautiful day with the weather this warm,” it’s a passing comment that makes Angela laugh, surprisingly light-hearted as she turns her staff to Lena, patching a cut quickly, and watches her zip off into the distance again, though staying as close as she can every once in a while to be a part of the ceremony.

A set of Jack’s helix rockets whiz past Angela’s side and take out an enemy that had gotten close without anyone noticing. Reinhardt continues at the same volume as before, if not louder, as though to try and drown out the nearing fire. “I cannot think of anything more fitting for two people so close to one another - you fight here side by side already, so any bump or hurdle in the life of a married couple will be nothing, and you love each other so much I think I’ve hardly seen you angry with each other in the past few years.”

Angela knows he’s right - she really can’t recall the last time she was genuinely angry at Genji. It would have been many years ago.

“Being that any battle may be our last… Genji, I am sure you have plenty to say, but keep it brief, Angela must have her turn too, before things in this battle can go sour,” he urges, and Genji is at their side within moments, drawing his wakizashi and Angela watches the blur of his cybernetics as he fends of an enemy turret’s fire with ease.

“You are right, Reinhardt, there is so much I want to say… but for now… Angela, you know I will always fight by your side,” He begins, and she turns her staff to him as he dashes into a crowd of enemies, taking them down one by one and then returning into their group, more tightly-knit than usual as they wait. “My brother speaks of honor, but I know no greater honor than your love, and being able to defend it and you like this. Nothing anyone ever says will change how I feel for you, and how I have felt for you for so many years now...” He takes a moment to return to her side, Lena drops one of Jack’s biotic fields to surround all of them, and Angela’s free hand brushes against Genji’s arm while the other keeps a strong grip on the Caduceus. “We will have a proper ceremony, but there is no way I am going out without being able to call you my wife at least once,” he tries to make light of it, and Angela appreciates it.

He looks to her, and she nods, unwillingly feeling tears well up in her eyes. This wasn’t how this was supposed to happen, but all of a sudden it’s feeling too perfect.

“I’m so unprepared for this. I hadn’t even thought yet about what I would say on our wedding day. I didn’t want it to be cliche or overused. Everything that you have done for me, and every step we’ve taken in our lives together, has made me stronger and given me something to live for. There was a time where I was worried I was too jaded and would never see good in the world again through my tired eyes, but I was wrong.” She’s crying now, she wipes at her tears with the heel of her hand, feeling the scratch of her gloves against the skin of her cheek. “I don’t want anything to go wrong here, but I’m glad I get to call you my husband after all,” she chuckles weakly, a splash of Ana’s biotics enough to keep all of them going for just a few more moments.

“Genji Shimada, when you answer this, you answer both to God and to all of us who have become your family, since just as we love you, we love Angela and are protective of her as well. Do you promise to protect Angela, love her, in sickness and health, for better and worse, until death parts you?” Reinhardt sends another fire strike, and raises his barrier to the sudden deafening sound of approaching aircraft. Angela’s hope begins to grow. That’s the sound of another Orca. Lena’s laughter and whooping brings new energy to them all, as backup finally arrives, and Genji is proud to announce his answer.

“I do!”

“Excellent! For you, my dearest Angela Ziegler, I have known you so long, and you will answer to us if you don’t treat him right, but you know that,” Reinhardt’s thunderous laughter lifts her mood and the door of the orca opens as it hovers some distance behind them, dropping their fellow agents into the battle to help them. “Do you promise to fight beside and protect Genji, and love him in sickness and health, for better and worse, until death parts you, which certainly won’t be today?”

“I do,” she says and her eyes travel to Genji, still some feet beside her, and he holds his hand out to her for her to take. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a green, white and gold tank, and a pink MEKA unit descend from the Orca, matrix up, and for a moment, blissful silence envelops them as bullets are taken up by the new shield, followed by Orisa dropping a barrier of her own to envelop their group completely from one side, giving Reinhardt a moment to lower his and recharge. He takes the moment to turn to the two of his wards.

“I have fought enough battles to earn scars and honorable mentions, but there is no greater power than the one gifted to me by both of you in allowing me to do this. So then, by the honor I have earned in my years, I name both of you husband and wife. I would say kiss, but wait a moment, until we are safer.”

As if on cue, Lucio tumbles down from the Orca, and the aura of his song mends them all, and finally the enemies begin to recede and the front line moves away from them as the other agents help push them back.

Genji’s hand envelops her own just as she looks up to meet his gaze. He tugs her closer, her grip on her staff faltering a bit. “What do you think, _koishii_? What about Genji Ziegler-Shimada?”

“Don’t,” Angela laughs weakly, the thought of Genji taking her last name a little absurd, though she had recently been entertaining the thought of her taking both of theirs, and his arm comes to wrap around her. They’re safe enough now that she’s confident they won’t get hurt in taking a moment for themselves right now.

In the fading heat of the battlefield, in a way that’s not-so-official but certainly for the moment perfect in her eyes, she gets to kiss him as his wife for the first time.


	4. day 4 - Vintage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> day 4 - Vintage  
> There's something about the couch, in its age, that comforts both of them.
> 
> A/N: Another time where I weep over canon timeline Gency... Sorry this took so long again! This one is an introspective, from Mercy's POV, and a bit shorter. I ended up being completely and utterly exhausted Saturday - I was expecting to watch two dogs and ended up with three dogs and a toddler, and collapsed as soon as I got home. Enjoy though!

It’s like a huge realization that her life has almost come full circle when Angela realizes how far things have taken her sitting on the sofa one day. It’s not because she has some Earth-shattering moment of clarity, or because something sudden and tragic happens. It’s because she sits there with a medical journal on her lap picking at the loose threads of one of the cushions, and she realizes that when she first sat on this couch, doing this exact same thing with a stack of paper in her lap, she was 24 years old.

This couch was a gift to her from the patron donor of the hospital in Switzerland - an antique when she received it, and now even more so. This couch had lived through everything. She’d moved it to her office at the Watchpoint when she joined Overwatch, which is where it stayed, and remained with her until just several years ago when she moved it from her office into her new home. It was due to lack of furniture at the time, but it quickly became something much more important than just something to sit on.

So many things have happened on this couch, and thinking about it now, more and more things are coming to mind. 

This sofa has seen so many emotions. 

She remembers the negative, crying at the end of her first week as head surgeon, five days of double shifts deep but loving every single moment of it despite the pain of being so emotionally invested in her job. She remembers sitting on it on her first day at the new Watchpoint, taking in the sights around her, curious and scared at only 25 but loving every memory that Overwatch was giving her even in the short time she’d been there. Most painful of all, of course, was what happened after all that. She remembers sitting on this couch as she watched the news, seeing the absolute destruction of Watchpoint: Zurich, and weeping with a broken heart for the loss of her friends.

She remembers this couch being a part of several more major life events, too. At least, major looking back on them now, since hindsight is 20/20 and Angela honestly believes in that silly little quirk called the Butterfly Effect now.

She had collapsed on this couch and slept for a good four hours after the fifteen hour surgery to save Genji’s life. She’d collapsed on this couch and screamed into a pillow after finding out what had happened to him through O’Deorain’s experiments. She had cried here as well when she lost what felt like her whole team to Blackwatch. Jesse, Gabriel, Genji, they had all left her, and ended up changed.

It’s not all negativity, though.

Certainly, there are plenty of good times she remembers from this couch as well. She remembers having it in her office in Zurich, and on the rare occasions her work took her back home, she’d read Genji’s letters on that sofa, wrapped in a blanket because she couldn’t be bothered to go back to her apartment just to be back at the hospital in a few hours.

When they had it moved back to Gibraltar back from her office at the hospital, it was the first place she collapsed and laughed - which turned into tears quite quickly - the first time she came back after the recall. Lena had come in some time later and found her, and the two of them hugged and cried together on that sofa for a long time, mourning how many years they could have had and catching up.

She remembers hearing about the Orca’s arrival from that side of the Globe, and sitting on this couch when, some time later after its landing, a knock alighted at her office door at Gibraltar, and opening the door to a very different Genji Shimada - still a sight for sore eyes at the time. They had sat on this very sofa for hours the night of when he returned, speaking about all the things that he had only glossed over in his letters. She wanted to hear about everything - from his journey after he left Blackwatch to when he discovered his new home amongst the Shambali. He had changed so much, but for the better - no longer did she see raw untamed fire and anger chasing him down every step he took, no matter where he went.

This couch has been there to hear things, too. It’s been a centerpiece in a room where she gave diagnoses, both good and bad. It’s been a reliable resting place in an office where she saw the same people - day in, and day out - whether it was Jesse coming in for a cut or gash or the oft times where she would check on the function of Genji’s vital biotic-based cybernetics. Unbeknownst to her, while it also heard her first confession to only her own ears about how she felt about the younger Shimada (she remembers sinking into the fabric of the cushions and whispering curse words to herself and mumbling “I think I love him”), it had also been privy to a whispered confession or two from the man himself (indeed, there were at least three or four times where Genji would visit her at an odd hour and find her asleep either at her desk or on this sofa, in which cases he’d always cover her with a blanket, tuck a stray strand of wheat-gold hair behind her ear, maybe steal a kiss to the crown of her head… and if he could hear her snoring and knew she was too deep to wake from it, he’d whisper his “sleep well, my love”, or the night he whispered an honest confession in his mother tongue to the sound of her soft snoring while she drooled lightly on her desk).

Just a few months ago though, they had moved it into the most important place it has been, and the place it was inevitably to stay.

It sits now, faded and worn, in the corner of their first apartment together. They’ve only been off Watchpoint for three full months, and their proper wedding ceremony only about four months ago or so - the whole situation in Ilios had gone by the previous year. The couch had seen them through planning the wedding, planning their move, and planning the logistics of many an Overwatch mission.

As she sits here, and listens to the door begin to open, she looks up with a smile and stands from the old sofa, knowing it has seen the beginning of her story, and it will also see the end - though the middle of it, now, is just as sweet.


	5. day 5 - Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> day 5 - Light  
> She is his light at the end of the tunnel, and early on, he only hopes that the anger and darkness in his soul will not taint her.
> 
> A/N: Here we go again - I tried to start as early as possible today but work was slammed and we're understaffed as usual. This one shouldn't be canon divergent anymore, as I watched the new event despite being stuck at work (seriously, what else is a meager lunch break for but surrounding myself with more Overwatch?) so I hope you all enjoy, and happy Uprising / Retribution!

The first time he sees her, he doesn’t really _see_ her. His vision is clouded by blood and the haze of unconsciousness slipping ever closer, but when he peels his eyes open through the pain, he’s fairly sure it’s an angel he’s seeing. The logical part of his brain, struggling with blood loss, sees the surgical light above her, but the part of his brain that has given in sees a halo (later, he realizes he probably wasn’t too far off - she didn’t have the headpiece then, but she was still his guardian angel). He hears her, though it’s muffled, and he can’t make out her words, but gentle hands run over his chest and he feels himself go under.

When he awakes again, it’s not the angel, but a gruff older-looking man who greets him and tells him he has a tube down his throat. He wants to reach for it and tear it out, but as he looks down at the blankets he realizes there’s nothing for him to reach with - his other arm is so covered in IVs that it’s impossible to move. The man is hanging out the door and within hardly half a minute, there she is again.

"Mister Shimada," he hears her say, her voice so measured in a moment like this, "there was a terrible act committed against you," she says and he bites back the thought of oh, tell me something I don’t know already, I’m not stupid and can’t feel either of my legs, "you have lost three of your limbs, part of your lower jaw… there is the potential for huge amounts of physical therapy and speech therapy likely to get you used to the new-"

"M…'rother…" He cuts her off. Half of his mouth is numb, and he can’t feel his tongue. His speech is slurred, yet it burns inside him as he tries to verbalize that it was his own family that did this to him, simply because his ideas of fun were different than his brother’s.

He wishes that he could take this moment to appreciate her beauty. Years ago, he would have pursued someone like her tirelessly to call her his own for a night and then move on to the next beautiful woman he would see. Now, all he feels is anger. It’s always there, tugging him down but spurring him on at the same time. He’d succeed in each venture, and broke his mind and body in order to push himself to recover faster. To get revenge faster.

It fuels him towards bad decisions more often than not. He forgoes any of the speech therapy. He’s perfectly fine relearning this on his own. As soon as he’s walking, he spends his time getting used to the new prosthetics.

Then, Doctor Moira O’Deorain appears to him with the promise of making him stronger. This isn’t the kind of stronger that Mercy talks to him about in the brief times he gets to spend with her now. Moira tells him that she can outfit him with weapons, give him better prosthetics, speaks to him of things that cannot be possible, and sure enough he leaves Overwatch for Blackwatch. Just like always, the night he finds himself sneaking away, she is there. She is always awake at odd hours, and he curses himself for not thinking about this before making his move to leave the Watchpoint.

 _“Are you angry with me?”_ He asks her into the otherwise still quiet of the night, and she shakes her head. She’s in her standard Overwatch henley, the shirt a size or two too big for her, probably left over from the days before the recall, a mug of tea in her hands. He adjusts his bag of meager belongings over his shoulder.

 _“No,”_ she says softly, but sets down her tea and gravitates towards him. He drops the bag softly yet unceremoniously, and she stands within a few feet of him, looking down and a little bit hurt. His chest burns with regret knowing he is the one making her feel this way. _“I know you can make your own decisions, and that you can watch out for yourself, just…”_ Her next sigh is drawn out, and he stares at her, wondering what her next words will be. _“Don’t let that witch get too close to you. You also have my permission to hit Jesse if he does anything stupid.”_ There is a sentiment behind her words, and he lifts his bag up again when he picks her tea back up.

 _“I will be cautious,”_ he says to her, and she nods. He starts to turn around and leave, until she calls back out to him.

 _“Genji,”_ it’s almost a whisper into the empty hallway beside the two of them, and he turns to her just in time for her to be directly beside him, an arm slung around his midsection as she briefly embraced him and then rushed back away, hiding what he knew was probably tears.

His time in Blackwatch is honestly uneventful. He tries to stay as far away from O’Deorain if possible - not for him, but for Angela because she asked him to do so, and to a point also begins to understand why she gave him permission to smack McCree around a little - he and Angela are close, but he’s not jealous, he knows Jesse is more like a sibling to her.

The next time he sees her, it’s joining Reyes and Jesse to see off the King’s Row team - her among them. He doesn’t want to watch her go - he’s worried about what will happen to her, given the small size of their team across from what seems to be endless amounts of Omnics currently taking place in the Uprising. She hugs Ana tightly, even Morrison steps down from his office to see them off, she claps Jesse on the shoulder hard before hugging him too, and then she stands before him, that same sad look in her eyes that seem to be the only expression she ever has when looking at him.

 _“Please be careful,”_ he whispers, and his arm tugs her in closer. He avoids the metal and mechanisms of the Valkyrie wings and lets his hand rest gently in the small of her back, and he feels her sigh against what's left of the skin of his neck. She rests there for a long moment and then pulls back, and he sees her blue eyes looking into his, sees that they're holding back tears that she quickly blinks away. Her hand comes up to touch his faceplate, and the tips of her fingers brush against the skin near his eyes.

 _“I should be telling you that,”_ she says softly, and her expression looks pained, too sad for the small smile on her lips.

 _“I will see you when you return,”_ he says with purpose, though quiet enough for only her to hear, and her hand lingers in his longer than it should, he follows her grasp slightly for several moments as she walks towards the Orca to board.

He doesn’t manage to reunite with her upon her return. He knows that she’s made it back safe - he was very clear to Reyes that he wanted a status update on the King’s Row mission once it was over, but never told him why (Gabriel was dense and didn’t see the way the fire in his eyes burned at a slightly different temperature whenever Angela was concerned). Within the next two years, he watches as both his and Angela’s worlds crumble down around them. He sends her a letter after the explosion at the Swiss HQ, and soon after the official disbandment, he disappears off the radar.

He doesn’t learn how to place or name the emotion he feels until he comes under the care and study of Zenyatta. In his months of learning with the Shambali, and as the anger slowly fades, he begins to see more and more how she was always there to light up the darkness surrounding him. He remembers hearing about the recall, and wondering if she would answer - until he realized that he’s known all along that she would. So, he invites Zenyatta to come with him, to serve again under the name of Overwatch, and takes a step on a journey that will take him back to the other side of the Eurasian continent, and back into her arms (he hopes).

When she finally sees him again, and greets him with a smile, and drowns out all of the darkness with how brightly she shines, he knows he’s home, and truly at peace again.


End file.
